This album won’t be for everyone, but it’s quite the trip.

It’s the sound of a band subverting expectations in the most dramatic fashion possible. And it confirms The Horrors as one of Britain’s most intriguing bands.

Premonition is a finely wrought, searing career-coda, determined to take a sledgehammer to the cliché that growing older must result in complacency.

One Breath may not be a masterpiece but it does enough to suggest she has a chance of making one someday.

On The End, So Far, the nihilistic furnace still glows hot, but amongst the fuming metal riffs, Slipknot also fume in a more creative way.

There is something about the tension and balance afforded by Doves’ lyrical and melodic heaviness, the pounding thrill of their hard-driven grooves, and the glittering psychedelic detail of cinemascopic arrangements, that is mesmeric and compelling.

An album for the ages, as well as being an awards season shoo-in, it is sure to succeed in doing precisely what Burna told Billboard his music is all about – “bringing people who don’t even speak the same language together to dance.”

You suspect that getting on the wrong side of White would be inadvisable. Thankfully, he has channelled his demons in Lazaretto to create one of the great break-up albums of recent years.

Hannigan rewards close attention, though. Lyrical phrases float up that demonstrate she is a writer of great care, with an eye for an arresting image.

It feels like Del Rey’s way of reminding us we still don’t know as much about her as we like to think. Blue Banisters hints, tantalisingly, that there is far more to reveal, while putting us firmly in our place. Make no mistake about it: Del Rey will do it all strictly on her own terms.

It’s a big, angry, pile-driving, end-times heavy rock workout with frontman Eddie Vedder alternately spewing fury and despair at the state of the world.

QOTSA now know what is expected of them after a decade of commercial appeal: rock ‘n’ roll that’s not too heavy, lyrics that aren’t too vicious. Then they decide to stick their middle fingers up and make what they want regardless.

Sometimes [the strings'] swell threatens to overwhelm the quirkiness, but in the best things, such as Skies are Rare, they work perfectly together.

[Houghton's] first album of idiosyncratic banjo pop has been worth the wait.

He brings his expressive voice and interesting lyric-writing to traditional-minded Irish ballads.... Class.

Chromatica offers Gaga at her most energetic and forceful, and that is something to behold.

Epic and intimate, serious and playful, Okkervil River's third album is genuinely awe inspiring, growing with each replaying.

When Fall Out Boy are in top gear, they’re timeless: if only this whole album had cut some of the filler, it could have been a stellar return to form.

There’s plenty of life in the old dog yet.

It's surprisingly accessible, hypnotic and beautiful if you give it time and concentration.

The way their voices swoop and bend together is a delight.

Ugly Season may seem just that to those who prefer Hadreas’s smoother side. Yet the most compelling elements of his work remain, and the album is a culmination of one of the most consistent and emotionally generous artists today. Without the focus of the dance performance, the onus is on the listener to concentrate – but the rewards are as rich as ever.

By the time Roderick closes out with a fully orchestrated baroque dismissal of a former associate (“I’d like nothing more than you darken my doorstep nevermore,” Vanian politely croons), there can be no doubt that Darkadelia lives up to its foreboding title. It also represents one of Britain’s most idiosyncratic and enduringly excellent rock bands, in thrilling form.

This began life as an art project at Somerset House, with Harvey composing and recording in a makeshift studio before a viewing public. Such pressurised circumstances might explain the absence of any sense of real pleasure in the finished work. I don’t hesitate to hail it as impressive but it does feel more civic project than classic album.

Coexist may not sound as dramatically original as their debut but it is every bit as other-worldly, like eavesdropping on intimate conversations between forlorn lovers on a space station orbiting around a distant planet.

Hoodies All Summer is the album that grime has been crying out for, an audacious state-of-the-nation address from one of its most articulate lyricists.

This is a set of absolute bangers including a barrel-house Crocodile Rock romp through Little Richard’s Bible, the twisty Americana-flavoured fantasia of Riverman and a moving Elton solo finale on When This Old World Is Done Me. On such evidence, we’re not done with him yet, nor he with us.

With more restrained tempos and a broader, gentler soundscape, the focus shifts to Flowers’s thoughtful lyrics, lovely melodies and grave yet pliant vocals for the most nuanced and heartfelt set of songs that he (with various co-writers and band members) has ever conjured up.

Self Made Man is a further confirmation that these are women of substance.

There’s not an ounce of fat on these eight, energised tracks. Everything is sharpened by the awareness of mortality and there is alchemy’s in Pop’s ability to infuse such resignation with real electricity.

While still manic in its tempo-changing lunacy, Hellfire is more approachable and organised, as the production by sometime Björk engineer Marta Salogni asserts a certain order amid the vari-speed chaos.

The 17-track record is as hyperactive, heartfelt and honest as we’ve come to expect from the group.

The confidence of this Texan trio's last effort (2009's Fits) is lacking on their first major-label release.

The results may be a bit odd and unfashionable, but one of the great pleasures of Walking Like We Do is that it simply could not have been made by anyone other than The Big Moon.

In guitarist-singer James Dean Bradfield and drummer and multi-instrumentalist Sean Moore, they boast two incredibly gifted musicians whose dense arrangements glitter with intricate interplay.

Upon the first few listens, it’s a confusing album: there’s plenty of their usual sing-song melodies and musings on modern dissatisfaction, such as on When We Were Very Young. ... But it’s the synth-laden, poptastic I Don’t Know What You See In Me that seems glaringly out of place.

Sharper production focuses the singer's woozier tendencies, revealing a succession of hooks to adorn his take on Neil Young's grooving folk-rock and Blur's twisted indie.

Scintillating and confident. ... This is music to bop to on the streets, to listen to in church with a big congregation, or to soak up alone in a room.

As it shifts from the McCartneyesque soft rock of Sweetheart Mercury to the psychedelic mantra of The Warhol Me and very Sparks-like piano chamber pop of Comme D’Habitude, everything tends to sound a bit like something you might have heard before being lovingly recontextualized.

Gospel choirs hum and swell tenderly beneath the rougher edges of his riffs. They add mature, universal gravitas and often a holy ecstacy to an intense, youthful lyrical tangling of religion and romantic obsession that regularly finds him poised "between love and abuse".

Wanderer is an album of peculiar little songs that you won't hear in anyone else's catalogue. It is ungainly, odd, and at times almost amateurish. For some, Cat Power will always sound slightly unfinished. For others, it is exactly that quality that makes her records ring with raw truth.

Now 70 years old, she is back on form with her 15th album.

She certainly knows how to convey emotion.

It's a loose album, an indulgent album, and not all likeable but, unlike any other outfit of their tenure, they maintain a raw punch as if recording in a local bar for the sheer blast of it.

She shows in Everything Changes that she can keep up with the times.

Young offers up rough and ready songs about the state of the environment, slightly mollified by dreamy ballads for his third wife, Daryl Hannah (the Splash star is characterised as “a mermaid in the Milky Way”), sung in a tender, trembling falsetto.

Dreamy and digressive, Parker’s songs meander and drift as if going nowhere before suddenly switching track. It can be hard to get to grips with, but there is purpose to such apparent waywardness. Meditative lyrics grapple with the relentless passage of time, lending emotional grit to his woozily blissful jams.

Her songs may be about growing pains, but they’ve got timeless appeal.

Whether Pot Of Gold’s lullaby or any of Felt Better Alive is exactly hit material by 2025 standards is hard to say, but it’s wonderful to hear this wayward hero sound so happy to be alive.

Van the Man is back doing what he does best. Remembering Now, his 47th album, is 14 songs of beautiful and reflective music addressing aging, romance and a sense of yearning for the landscapes and landmarks that made us who we are.

It is a bold concept for a dazzling album, although I suspect most listeners would be hard pressed to make much sense of it without Boucher’s interpolations.

Power Up is as exultantly fierce, furious and – let’s be honest – belligerently dumb as anything in their catalogue. It is no-nonsense, headbanging, fist-waving, foot-stomping, raw-throated, hard-screaming, riff-ripping, pedal-to-the-metal maximum rock and roll all the way.

Their fourth album is their best yet: bright, poppy and exciting.

First Two Pages of Frankenstein is up there with Boxer, the band’s 2007 album on which they thrillingly found their musical feet. This is the sound of a band who’ve honed their sound to such an extent that they’re now towing a whole new generation in their wake.

Brimming with both spiritual depth and astonishing musical dexterity, Shook feels contemporary and important, reflecting America’s present-day diversity and letting the disenfranchised speak.

Paul Griffith (drums); Amanda Shires (violins/vocals and a gifted songwriter with her own album Lightning Strikes just out); Chad Staehly (keyboards); Jason Isbell (guitars) and Mick Utley (vocals) add the expertly jaunty sound to Snider's ironic and enjoyably dark lyrics.

Indeed, for all the slick but formulaic pleasures of the album’s mainstream pop push, it is arguably that Cyrus is at her most compelling when she dances like no one is watching.

While these songs are like discarded pub furniture, Bramwell sounds like a wiley old alley cat, sat on top of it and looking up.

At times she strives too hard for Tom Waitsian wonky Americana. But more often she makes the Canadian wilderness her own.

Producer Jacquire King, who worked on Tom Waits’s Mule Variations and Norah Jones’s The Fall, allows Della's gutsy sound to soar.

If Twice As Tall is Burna’s bid for global superstardom, then the music is polished to befit his aims.

The Dream is sensuous and seductive, but it often lingers on the borderline of turning into a nightmare.

N.K-Pop will be a treat for Heaton’s fans. But it could probably use a little K-Pop power if he harbours any desire to reach and preach to the unconverted.

When you are as talented as Fousheé, the temptation to show you're a jack of all trades must be intoxicating, and it's one of the reasons softCORE is such an unpredictable thrill ride.

As big and bold as any fan could hope for.

Crash is clever and fun, as her admirers have come to expect from XCX, but until Charli scores a bona fide smash it is going to feel like an art project commenting on the state of pop rather than the real thing.

There is no real attempt to deliver definitive readings, with the vocal interplay between Mitchell, Carlile and Mumford on A Case of You shifting from the original’s romantic intensity to loose and cheerful celebration. Nonetheless, there are moments that cut to the core, particularly when guest vocalists back off to allow Mitchell space to possess the song in a voice that may be lower and grittier than of yore, but remains supple, powerful and resonant.

Her vocals remain powerful: from soaring operatic drama to persuasive pop melody and an ominous snarl; it doesn’t sound like she’ll take “nein” for an answer on the spacey synths of Gib Mir Deine Liebe. On the English-language tracks, her lyrics sometimes sound gauche, but the sentiments ring true, and her guest-list is enjoyably far-ranging.

This is What I Mean completely abandons the often very macho bullishness at the heart of hip hop, to show rap at its most sensitive.

What meets at this particular crossroads is good old-fashioned blues, soul-stirring gospel and a funky, Hammond-organ-soaked sound.

The all-female indie-rock quartet, have returned after a six year hiatus with fourth album Radiate Like This, and it feels more intimate than ever.

Above all, Joy’All seems like the work of an artist content with floating through life, just having fun – and she’s brought us along for the ride.

It is a testament to just how utterly robust these songs are that the results are, inescapably, joyous. The recordings have been given a bit of digital oomph, with all the sounds polished and honed, and levels kicked up a notch, so the result is dense and shiny, with a relentlessly modern attack.

E3 AF marks his growth into an elder statesman of rap. Perhaps he sounds so assured because he’s embedding himself again in the sound that he helped to pioneer.

It can get a bit messy at times, but if you like the sound of The National channeling Bruce Springsteen at a rowdy barroom hoedown then this could be one for you.

As so many are today, it’s a lockdown special, and this shows both in its more ambitious production and its slight air of self-indulgence.

His latest offering is powered by some lovely, liquid bass playing that offers a silvery thread through the textured mélange of disjointed electronic noises, splintered guitars and ghostly traces of strings. It is certainly not for everyone. But Ejimiwe’s relentlessly downbeat delivery may have finally found its moment.

The album is a beauty, none the less, the care put into it confirming Williams's exalted position in the tower of song.

All 11 original songs spiral out from a strong, controlled core of patience.

As a record, Time isn’t just a sonic heart-swell for listeners, it’s the latest shift for a singer-songwriter who seems as if she’s constantly stretching toward the most whole version of herself.

Lover does not sound like the work of someone desperate to command the pop zeitgeist and yet is all the more likely to do so. Instead of trying to be all things to all audiences, it plays to the strengths of a witty songwriter in love, eager to tell anyone who will listen exactly how she feels.

Formentera is a gratifying record stuffed with perfectly crafted songs by a band completely at ease in their own skin.

The atmosphere is ultimately so paranoid and competitive, he makes being a rap star sound exhausting. Ignorance Is Bliss is at its most interesting when Skepta's volatile emotional state pushes to the surface of his combative persona.

Every Loser is a great, energising opening blast for 2023, a loud and lairy rock album jam-packed with the lust for life that has characterised Iggy’s whole wayward career.

Neither lets down an album that features songs by some of country music's finest lyricists.

All 12 are of a consistently high standard and sung with feeling.

While Caustic Love is clearly the work of a maturing singer-songwriter (shedding jaunty charm for depth and ambition), it finds the 27-year-old still skittering around in search of an artistic identity.

Entering Heaven Alive may not be his most ground-breaking album and won’t entirely satisfy those who come for the great White guitar wail. But this master musician really sounds like he’s enjoying himself with results that are pretty heavenly.

They are peppered with witty lines but, like an over-repeated punchline, the humour wears thin. For all its gorgeous highlights and overall brilliance, Love Is Magic is an album that is hard to love.

The result is both silkily seductive and moodily narcissistic.

Using entirely analogue tape, Vig, together with top mixer Alan Moulder, brings a deliciously lump-free production consistency to the Foos, who have often erred between the indigestible extremes of thrash-metal and acoustic angst.

The sound on this pivotal sixth album, however, is subdued, moody, even dark at times, the instrumentation stripped back to bare essentials.

Nelson co-writes many of Gaga’s songs too, which essay a slightly awkward journey from rock balladry to slickly superficial pop. In one sense, there is a tangible jump in standards as Gaga comes to the fore on the second half of the album--she is a major musical talent. But there is also a weird disconnect as the soundtrack shifts gear to anodyne modern pop.

ADespite occasionally drawing blood, The Haunted Man doesn't live up to its stripped and dangerous cover, often retreating to gambol about in the backwaters of Khan's imagination.

Spirituals is tonally consistent despite its range of distinctive influences and talents. Just when Santigold threatens to lean into the corny, as on the SBTRKT-produced Shake, she pulls back, adding a whimsical, purposefully on-the-nose rattle sound at the end of each wedding disco-like “shake, shake, shake it” hook. It’s a joy to hear her back in her creative swing.

The Dreamer is occasionally powerful and moving as James ranges across memorable songs including Otis Redding's Champagne & Wine.

Prine is extraordinary, one of the most eloquent artists of modern times and seeing where it all started, in this super CD, really is something very special.

O'Donovan knows how to sing perfectly with sparse and delicate arrangements and the album, which also features Tucker Martine (the Decemberists), shows she can create some magic of her own on this her second solo album.